Tennis, Miniature Tigers, Devon Williams

Description

In the dead of winter, it's nice to be taken on a journey, if only in our minds. A new album called Cape Dory does just that. The retro-pop record was written and recorded by the band Tennis, the husband-and-wife team of Patrick Riley and Alaina Moore, while they journeyed on the Atlantic. After saving up together, the couple bought a 30-foot sailboat and embarked on a yearlong tour of the Eastern Seaboard.

Although the stories of the journey have now materialized as songs, music did not play a significant role during the couple's time spent sailing.

"That was definitely not something we had on our minds at the time," Moore tells Weekend Edition Saturday host Scott Simon. "It was all about sailing. We were trying to immerse ourselves in our new lifestyle and get everything we could out of the experience. It wasn't until later that we felt so inspired by the experiences we had that we wanted to invest it all into something, and we decided to use music."

When inspiration struck, music seemed like an obvious outlet for the two, as Moore had classical training on piano and Riley had experience playing guitar in several local bands. But they say that neither of them had anticipated returning to music.

"I think we had both put our music equipment away pretty much forever, thinking we would never approach playing music as a lifestyle again until we went sailing," Riley says.

On the water and away from the distractions of daily life on land, the couple found that sailing allowed them time to themselves, reigniting the creative spark. Moore says that on the water, "you suddenly feel more productive and thoughtful."

"You see the rawest form of experience — an experience devoid of judgment or opinions from other people — and it just yields itself to more creativity," Riley says.